Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to protective padding and more particularly relates to recycled protective tiling.
Description of the Prior Art
The most common injuries at recreational facilities such as playgrounds and athletic or sporting arenas are attributed to falls. Such injuries include head trauma, fractures and sprains, some leaving long term disability. Children very often run on concrete slabs or loose gravel, while others play on swings, carrying them high above the ground. During incidents in which the child loses control or balance, the ground material can prove to be very unforgiving.
Conventional methods of minimizing injury from falls include padding the ground with dense material such as closed cell foam. This type of padding commonly comes in lengthy sheets that are cut to size. The sheets are placed over the ground, regardless of the composition. For example, closed cell foam pads are often placed over loose gravel in the same manner that they are placed over concrete slab. Unfortunately, the underlying ground material can affect the overall effectiveness of the protective padding.
Closed cell foam pads most typically have a planar bottom and top without any recesses. While this conventional design provides means for effectively positioning and maintaining coverage of a concrete slab, if the same foam pad is placed on loose gravel or rocks, it will not be secured and may cause further personal injury from movement of the protective covering. Additionally, when closed cell foam pads are placed on uneven surfaces such as gravel, rooftop membranes, the foam pads take the shape of the underlying surface, creating an uneven activity area that may provoke falls from tripping. Conventional closed cell foam padding also tends to become slippery when wet from inclement weather or nearby sprinklers as water commonly pools on the flat surface thereof.
There are also conventional tiles available that are made from reprocessed or recycled rubber, for example, from shredded rubber automobile tires. However, such conventional tiles do not interlock with one another and may separate, curl, peel or buckle, leaving either an exposed area of the supporting surface on which the tiles are laid, or an uneven surface, which may cause injury to a child or person playing on the tiled surface. Also, if conventional non-interlocking tiles are installed on a rooftop, they may be unsafe and may cause injury because of the potential flight characteristics of such tiles resulting from high wind conditions.
When conventional tiles are placed next to each other, even if they were somehow glued together, there may be a tendency for the tiles to separate, curl and/or peel at their edges, possibly caused by temperature fluctuations or use. Such curling may result in an uneven surface and may cause injury to a person walking or running thereon.
A viable solution to the design flaws of conventional tiles is disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2012/0124925 and entitled “Interlocking Rubber Tiles for Playgrounds,” the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. The aforementioned published application discloses a tile that may be interlocked with adjacent tiles to cover an area, such as a playground or rooftop. The design utilizes not only a plurality of male connectors and female receptacles positioned on the lateral sides of the tile that are engageable with one another so that adjacent tiles may be interlocked, but also a plurality of elongated projections spaced apart from each other and situated on one or more lateral sides of a tile, and elongated slots spaced apart from each other which are positioned on one or more lateral sides of an adjacent tile so that the projections of one tile may be received by the slots of an adjacent tile. Glue may be used to hold each elongated projection in a respective slot.
Although the projections and slots disclosed in the aforementioned '925 published application works well to prevent the interlocked tiles from curling at their edges, it is sometimes difficult to force the projections of one tile into respective slots of an adjacent tile when the tiles are tightly arranged so that there is little or no gap between adjacent tiles. It is possible that, by applying a downward force on the tiles to cause them to interlock, the projections of one tile may be sheared off or damaged, or may not fully seat properly in a respective slot of an adjacent tile, the result being a weakened anti-curling connection between adjacent tiles.